Our little man, George was born at 29 +6 weeks on News Years Day 2008. Up until that day the preganancy had been pretty uneventful (problem wise that is) but going into sudden labour was about to change all of that. New Years Eve 2007 was the first for a long time that i had actually enjoyed and was looking forward to 2008 and one (also for many years) that was celebrated alcohol free!! So i was a little put out on NYD to wake up feeling like i had drunk several bottles dry. I didn’t have any reason during most of that day to think that it was due to anything otherthan having a later night than i could handle. By about 6.30pm that night i was experiencing back ache and had the ‘warm bath’ in an attempt to ease it however as i lay there i started to realise that the ‘backache’ wasn’t easing but was infact being more intense. I got out of the bath and started starring at the clock, then realised that it was about every 3 minutes or so that the ‘back ache’ was more intense. Sudden panic crept in along with the tears and the ‘omg’ thoughts ‘he can’t be coming yet, we’re not ready for him’. We reached the hospital about 7.45pm and waited about 10 mins for a midwife to appear. Her attitude was one of ‘its probably only a practice run’ an attitude that continued for the next hour until she finally realised that may be George was in fact on his way. Most of the first hour spent in the delivery room was spent trying to convince the midwife that i was in labour but she didn’t really seem that concerned. She gave my husband the doppler to listen for George’s heartbeat and said pointing to an area of my tummy ‘it should be somewhere around there’. She never examined me otherthan a quick feel of my tummy nor did she explain the reason for this. Apparently where premature babies are concerned midwives leave well alone and a doctor has to examine. But where was the doctor?? The midwife didn’t call him straight away and by the time she did and he finally arrived we had been at the hospital for just over an hour. By the time he ‘had a look’ he decided that George was on his way and rather fast so he called for another more senior doc. After he had examined me he stated that George was in a breech position but he was too far down the birth canal to pull him back to perform a c section so he would have to deliver as he was presenting.  Although George was still in his sac at first (which was protecting him to some extent) as things progressed the sac burst (all over the senior doc) and George was no longer ‘cushioned’ to continue his journey. By the time George entered the world at 9.46pm there was an audience of about 12 people and he was quickly whisked away….no cuddles, no kisses no nothing. We had a quick peek as he was being wheeled out of the room in an incubator. It was 5 hours later before we saw George again and by that time he was attached to all sorts and on a ventillator. Although he looked small and was aided with breathing, never once did we think we would never get to take him home. I wasn’t the first person to change his nappy and we didn’t get to old him until day 3. He never cried. His little body was black from bruising from the waist down. For the first 2 days he seemed to be doing ok considering but we were informed of the risk to brain damage due to the bruising but we didn’t want to think about it. However the day soon arrived when we were told George had had a bleed to the brain and was now brain damaged. No one knew for definate how bad at first it was but we were informed that if it happened again it could be fatal. It did happen again and it was fatal. Any slight choice that we may have been presented with initally had now been taken away from us, we were told that George was so badly brain damaged that even if he ever did leave hospital (which was highly unlikely) he would be unable to do anything and would be blind and deaf.  So our little man who was perfectly fine until he was born was now slipping away in front of us. Day by day brain cells were dying off and finally George was taken off the ventillator and allowed a dignified death. We were fortunate to have some quality time with our little man, we bathed him, dressed him sand to im, held him close and finally George became an angel while lying in between his mummy and daddy. George had every chance of survival if born head first, he was nearly 30 weeks, weighed 3lb, 6oz and had nothing major detected wrong with him during routine scans. Since then we have tried to address some concerns that we have with treatment prior to George’s birth with the hospital but they are just not interested. We feel that the delay in being seen by a doctor resulted in George being born breech, which then resulted in his death. The hospital have admitted that there is a 50/50 change of a premature baby being born in a breech position and in the case of premature babies, midwife intervention is limited. so if they know all this, why isn’t a doctor called immediately??? We won’t give up our quest to find the answers to our questions and we wont hospital proceedures when dealing with premature babies looked at. Currently response time is too slow and unacceptable. Amanda and Hugh - George’s very proud mummy and daddy.

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